


I knock the ice from my bones (try not to feel the cold)

by icygrace



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 08:50:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3971620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icygrace/pseuds/icygrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“When I went to speak with him about an annulment, Francis asked that I take some time to think, but it hasn’t changed anything. I could never return to you, to our marriage.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	I knock the ice from my bones (try not to feel the cold)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “All the King’s Horses” by Karmina. 
> 
> And thanks to the folks I have recently been talking Kennash with!

_Please, Bash, don't abandon me. I cannot have this child without you._

_If you had come to me in honesty, I might have considered it. But you lied to me and tried to trick me._

_Because I saw no other way! Please claim this child. You know what it's like to be born a bastard. The – the shame and the scorn –_

_Stop using this child only to save yourself! We are finished._

Now that he has time to think things through, recalled the months of their marriage that led up to that final ugly moment, the insecurity Kenna has always felt . . .

 

_Bash, you have no idea what it's like to be a girl in this world. Owning nothing, having no power except the effect that you have on men._

 

In his more charitable moments, he begins to regret his haste to end things with her. He recalls how she warned him, not her lover, during the siege, though she must have known by then that she carried his child . . .

 

_I knew before. During the siege, when the swords were flying, I called out to you. I saved your life, not Renaude's._

 

And his brother – good, loyal Francis, who has forgiven Mary so much, who continues to protect her, who is even now trying to open his heart to her once again – has certainly helped.

 

\---

 

“Mary told me about Kenna. I’m sorry, Bash.”

 

“I’m glad to see the back of her,” he replies bitterly.

 

“Are you truly?”

 

“She deceived me; she –”

 

Francis saves him from having to put into words the deception that made him want to sob like a child before his anger rose above his pain. To have Kenna try that after Delphine’s vision made him realize that the only woman he could ever want a family with was his wife, after she made him believe they could be together again . . . it had been too much to bear.

 

“I know what she did.” Then, very simply, Francis asks the most important thing, “Or, for all the pain that she has caused you, do you love her still?”

 

And, even angry (and hurt, he is man enough to acknowledge that at least to himself) as he remains, he knows the answer to that question as surely as he knows his own name. He cannot give voice to it, so he merely nods.

 

Francis gives him a knowing look. “Then don’t give it all up, brother. Don’t shut her out forever.”

 

\---

 

He has had pressing concerns to occupy him, but now that he is free of Delphine, he will go after Kenna.

 

She will apologize for her deception, he will offer to claim her child as his own, and she will accept, because what else is there to be done? Someday he will listen, someday he will forgive her, and someday they can be happy again.

 

But before he can put that plan into action, Kenna is returned.

 

\---

 

From his office, he can see Kenna descend from her carriage.  He experiences a flash of anger at the thought that she has returned to force his hand when he said he would not claim her child after she tried to trick him into it. They haven’t annulled their marriage, so her child would be presumed to be his unless he dragged her through the courts to prove infidelity and she knows he would do no such thing.

 

But then, didn’t he make up his mind to claim it anyway, to try to forgive her deception? And perhaps there is another reason for her return. He told himself he would stop assuming the worst of his wife and he will begin today.

 

\---

 

“Kenna,” he says when he first sees her, making sure to infuse the greeting with the warmth his words to her have lacked for so long.

 

“Sebastian,” she replies, his name on her lips as cold as hers was warm on his.

 

He shivers at the formality, at the ice in her voice, but he perseveres. He states the obvious. “You’ve returned.”

 

“I have.”

 

He waits for further explanation. “What brought you back?” he asks when none is forthcoming.

 

“I was attacked by highway robbers during my travels and escaped with little but the clothes on my back.” Her voice lacks any inflection, which raises the hairs on the back of his neck. “Then the reason for my journey became moot.”

 

“The castle decorating fell through?” he asks, because they are in public and one never knows who might overhear.

 

“You know what I mean,” she replies shortly, with such a bitter look that his heart clenches.

 

The child was an obstacle between them, would have been an inconvenient reminder of her time with Renaude all its life, and yet . . . he feels no relief. Looking at Kenna now, there is only one thing he can feel. “I’m sorry –”

 

“Spare me your sympathy. I’ve no need of it and even less desire for it, not from someone who probably thinks it exactly what I deserve.”

 

“Kenna, n –” The words die on his lips as she turns her back on him and walks away.

 

Perhaps this is what _he_ deserves for all the times he has turned his back on her and left her alone to watch him go.

 

\---

 

“Kenna.” Francis is politely puzzled. She’s never sought him out in his office before.

 

“Could I speak with you?”

 

“Of course.” He is kindness itself, gesturing for her to sit by the fire with him. He offers her wine, which she refuses.

 

She’d feared the worst. She twists her hands in her lap before summoning the courage to begin. “Your brother said he would speak to you before the siege, but so much has happened since then that . . . I thought I should take matters into my own hands now that I am back at court.”

 

Francis waits patiently until she can’t bear it.

 

“An annulment. I’d like to have our marriage annulled,” she says firmly. Politely, but firmly. “We were married under duress and have no children,” she continues pointedly.

 

Francis ignores the bait and is silent for a long while, staring into the crackling flames. “Are you certain? I know things have been . . . strained, but you’ve both hesitated to do anything permanent.”

 

“I am. I _need_ this. Please. I need to be able to move on, Francis.”

 

“Take some time to think this over. I know your journey was  . . . difficult.”

 

She wonders what precisely Mary has told him and finds it mortifying to think of them speaking about her situation. “It was. As was my marriage to your brother.”

 

Francis’s eyebrows rise, perhaps at her reference to her marriage in the past tense. “You loved him. I know you did.”

 

“I still do,” she admits, surprising herself. She shouldn’t, but she does. And if anyone knows what it is to love someone who hurts you, it is Francis. “And yet we . . . we’re not like you, Francis. Neither of us has your capacity for forgiveness and too much has passed between us to forget.”

 

Francis nods, sadly, and says nothing.

 

Apropos of nothing, she adds, “You’re a good man. And a good king, but first of all, a good man. You should know that.”

 

“Thank you.” He pauses. “Bash –”

 

“Please don’t, I beg you.”

 

“I’ll look into this, but please take some time.”

 

She nods reluctantly. “But I’ll never be able to look at him without thinking of it,” she blurts out.

 

The words she’s kept bottled up since her return are out at last.

 

She held her tongue because it seemed disrespectful of Mary’s terrible experiences to say them to her. Mary, who met her personally at the docks and embraced her like the sister neither of them has, who allowed her to weep in her arms in their room at the inn, who lay beside her through the night and stroked her hair like when they were little girls and one of them had a nightmare. She was once again the Mary Kenna knew before her rape and her entanglement with Condé.

 

She held her tongue because her friends all seem to think that good can come out of the bad, that now that she has returned, she can try again to make her marriage work. Lola, who should have understood best why she did what she did, says her situation was different, that Bash loves her, that she could and should have trusted him (there is so much Lola doesn’t know about their marriage), and that he will surely forgive her now. Even Greer, who has learned how to make her own way without a man’s help, advises returning to her marriage and her husband if he will have her. 

 

She’s not sure if Francis is precisely the best or worst person to have shared these words with, but perhaps there is no one else and she could not hold her tongue any longer.

 

“We’re not so different, my brother and I,” he replies softly.

 

“I’m sorry –”

 

“You’re being honest. That’s nothing to apologize for. You’ve always been honest.”

 

She scoffs.

 

“Except when you tried to trick Bash into thinking another man’s child his own.” But Francis doesn’t sound angry.

 

She has to choose her words carefully. “It was wrong of me to try to deceive him –” And it was. Quite against her will, she remembers not just the rage on his face and in his words, but also the hurt and betrayal in his eyes and his voice. And yet . . .

 

“My heart has ached for him, but I know what it is to be desperate to save someone you love, so I would never presume to judge you.” He squeezes her hand, just a moment, and nods again, his leave for her to leave his presence if she wishes.

 

She rises gratefully. “Thank you,” she says from the doorway. “For understanding.”

 

“There’s no need.” Francis hesitates. “Kenna?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“I think you’ll find Bash readier to listen than he was before.”

 

 _It’s too late_ , she thinks. But then her anger rises for the first time since it all happened. Even if he isn’t ready to listen, she will _force_ him to. She deserves that much. At last, she will take what she deserves and give her husband what _he_ deserves.

 

\---

 

“Kenna.”

 

She sits down at the table across from him and doesn’t bother with niceties. “When I went to speak with Francis about an annulment, he asked that I take some time to think, but it hasn’t changed anything. I could never return to you, to our marriage.”

 

The pain is as sharp and sudden as when that corrupt deputy in the north stabbed him, so much that he reflexively grabs at the old scar.

 

Where in the past Kenna would’ve been all concern, asking what was the matter, she doesn’t even notice. She is looking away from him now, her head tilted to his left and her eyes on the wall behind him.

 

“Kenna, please –”

 

Her body is here with him, but her mind has left the room as surely as he left her every time they argued. She is elsewhere entirely and he has a feeling he cannot follow her there.

 

“The family that helped me after the robbery, they sought a midwife – not because there was anything to be done about the baby, of course, but to make sure I didn’t become ill. The wife was very concerned about that.” Again, Kenna’s voice lacks inflection when she speaks. “She thought it might have been more damaging to my body because it wasn’t just . . . When Mary had her miscarriage, there was just blood . . .  so much blood, she said. I remember she looked so pale afterward and, when she said that, I wondered if that was why. I’d thought it had just been her grief. But Mary . . . that was . . . it was very early on. This was . . . there was something there, small, but . . . but clearly a baby. The midwife . . . she said I – I was further along than I’d thought. Weeks more. Women don’t lose babies so easily then, but I’d been traveling and I’d had such a shock, she said.” Kenna looks at him for the first time in her toneless recitation and it feels like an eternity. “You and I, we made our assumptions and I had to leave because of them. But we were wrong.”

 

She _can’t_ –

 

“It couldn’t possibly have been Renaude’s child. And whatever you’ve believed of me, before that, after our marriage, there’d been no one but you.” She makes a sound that’s half a laugh and half a sob. “Remember when I said I wanted it to be yours?”

 

He stares at her in horror, his pulse throbbing dully in his ears.

 

“Long before that, before you decided you wanted our marriage annulled and ended it in all but name, I wanted to bear your child. I wanted a child with your eyes and your smile, a child who would favor me with that smile far more often than you ever did, a child who would be my solace and my joy, who would fill my days and nights with something other than waiting for you and wondering – wondering what you were doing, if you would lie to me about it when you returned, what new accusation you would hurl at me, when you would next show me your disdain and distrust. And I nearly had that. _I nearly had that!_ ”

 

He cannot look at her; her pain is like to drown him and he closes his eyes against it.

 

When he opens them again, she lifts her chin and her eyes burn into his, her words low, slow, and precise. “But you took it from me as surely as those ruffians did and I could never look at you without remembering. No. To be perfectly honest, I could never look at you without blaming you.”

 

She rises, and he watches her leave, and that is when he knows he’s truly lost her.


End file.
